In reply to both your comments here: Motivations do matter and we look at those motivations to determine the truth of what someone is saying. You can spin almost any policy to sound like it will be good for anyone (as Trump has been doing) but when those promises are backed by motivations that don't follow one becomes skeptical.

The "alt right" leader was on tv yesterday saying he wasn't a racist etc. But all the evidence points otherwise. Were this man to run for president I think that is certainly viable to be brought up. No, w can't look inside his brain but if you're on video saying heil hitler (even if you later dismiss it as exuberation/irony) I think that speaks to your motivations.

I think there's a broader lessen that applies to ordinary racial interactions as well--psychoanalysis (trying to prove someone's motives) isn't fruitful. In our recent racial context, it's only created division (which Trump was able to exploit, by the way). My personal policy is to be very charitable about the motives of others, even if I'm quite sure they're not being honest about their own motives. I might say, "Hey, when you do X to me, it seems like you might be motivated by Y; I'm terribly sorry if I misunderstood--I just wanted to put it out there"; however, if the person tells me my suspicion was incorrect, I choose to believe that I did in fact misunderstand. 95% of the time, whether or not I was mistaken about the motive, my interactions with the person improve and empathy is increased between us. And in our current racial context, I think empathy is the only viable solution.

I think this is great for individual interactions, but doesn't apply when thinking large scale. Is a racist person going to have to meet every non-Blank person on Earth? I think its necessary to pare down to motivations in order to actually fix problems.